


To Oblivion

by what_alchemy



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-11
Updated: 2011-06-11
Packaged: 2017-10-20 08:07:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik misses the touch of Charles’s mind in his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Oblivion

Erik misses the touch of Charles’s mind in his own. It had been a warm presence, like dappled sunlight through a window. Sometimes, when he takes off his helmet, he hopes to feel the careful probe of Charles’s thoughts on the edges of his mind, but always, always he is disappointed. Charles has abandoned him.

The trouble with Charles, Erik tells himself, is that he lives on ideals and hopes. Charles always sought to shame Erik with his virtuousness, but Erik knows that Charles’s upright spine, wide eyed innocence and guileless belief in humanity’s innate good is a privilege — one that Erik cannot hope to possess. Erik knows too intimately the true darkness of human nature. It was not Shaw, after all, who had counted Erik’s people one by one, tattooed them, gassed them, starved and worked them to an agonizing death before throwing their shamed and naked bodies in an anonymous pile like so much refuse.

Erik should be angry at Charles for that privilege, for his purely intellectual, theoretical knowledge of the depths of humanity’s depravity. He is angry at many things, after all. But he finds that he can begrudge Charles none of that idealism, even though it has separated them permanently. It defines Charles as surely as his mutation does, or the blue of his eyes, or the lilt in his voice, or the mercy in the fabric of his character. Charles, beautiful and righteous, is something pure that Erik got to touch so fleetingly in a lifetime of taint. No, Erik cannot hold all of Charles’s irritating goodness against him. It would be like resenting an eagle the grace of its flight.

But that does not mean Erik does not count his regrets.

Erik places his helmet on the bedside table and sighs as he unclasps his cape and drapes it over a chair. He passes a hand over his forehead, pausing, as ever, to see if there will be a gentle touch, or the clipped syllables of his given name in a soft familiar voice in his mind like a spring breeze. There is not.

At the knock, Erik straightens and flicks his wrist to open the door from across the room, and Raven is a long-limbed, amber-eyed arrangement in the jamb, Venus in blue.

“Better luck tomorrow,” she says, a single shoulder raised in question. They had sought out a mutant in Sydney today — a worthy adversary, it turned out, and one who would have been a boon to have in The Brotherhood, if she and her volcanic blasts of acid could have been persuaded to leave her goat ranch on the outskirts of town. In Raven’s voice is a familiar thread of hope, and Erik’s chest aches to hear it before he hardens himself around that feeling, crushes it under the weight of his solitude. He knows he took himself away from this blue girl’s brother and has no one else to blame, but there, in the cavity in his mind that Charles’s voice once occupied, is a spark of anger. And longing.

“Why aren’t you in bed?” He modulates his voice to keep the growl from it, to keep from snapping at her. She is all he has left of Charles.

Raven steps inside, footsteps silent. She is even more agile now, having grown into the expansive comforts of her own body as it is, as it was meant to be: equal parts beautiful and devastating. That was always something Charles could not see, could not accept, and there is a fission of triumph in Erik’s gut to know that in this he has bested Charles at his own game of acceptance. It is no small satisfaction, too, to know that he took her away from Charles.

“I couldn’t sleep. I’d hoped…” There is a charged discomfort in the way she shifts from foot to foot, gazing at him intently, beseechingly.

Suddenly it seems quite inevitable. Erik and Raven. Magneto and Mystique. He already prizes her company over that of others; in fact, she is the only one with whom he will socialize, if one could call these brief talks they share socialization. The others — Angel, Azazel, Emma — are tools, useful for their mutations and nothing more. Raven is what passes for a friend. Briefly a vision of the future flickers behind Erik’s eyes: an impossible domestic scene complete with grinning blue children. It makes the contents of his stomach curdle, but still he lifts his eyes to meet hers. There it is: all that damnable Xavier hope.

He can’t have Charles, but he can have Raven.

Erik extends his hand, palm up. Raven is unsuccessful in her bid to keep the excitement from lighting her expression, but Erik disregards it, pulls her in close to his chest. Kissing her is utterly unlike kissing Charles; for all of his pacifism, Charles plundered Erik’s whole being when their mouths met. He was tooth and tongue and hot humidity and consumption. Raven is timid, her mouth and tongue small when they meet Erik’s, and the skin of her lips is quite like the rest of her skin: thick and dry. Erik pushes into her mouth, nudges it open wider until she relents to his onslaught. His hands settle on her hips, where the raised patterns of her skin provide another hard reminder that she is not the one for whom Erik’s blood pounds in his veins. Erik’s hands move to her backside, a smooth, pert fill for his palms, a pleasure separate from the spectre of a distant lover, and he groans at the sensation, squeezes her there. She moans and presses herself closer, her breasts flush against him. In the past, before Charles, he had lusted after those soft fragrant handfuls of feminine appeal, but now they are somehow in his way; they prevent him from being as close to his partner as possible. He wrenches away, and averts his eyes from the hurt and bewilderment in Raven’s.

“Get on the bed,” he says, voice gruff. “Hands and knees.”

Shining eyes go flinty and Raven casts him a dark look. Erik’s erection threatens to burst the zipper of his trousers even as his anger mounts, sends a flush prickling hot beneath his skin. He imagines, just for a moment, that he could tear her apart and lose himself to oblivion in the process.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” He sneers. “I should have known. You’re just a little girl playing a woman’s game. Get out.”

“And you’re just a bitter, angry man playing war games,” Raven retorts. “But God help me, Erik, I still want you.” Raven steps back, and as changeable as the ocean, she shifts and shimmers and then she’s Charles, naked and hard and gazing up at him with all of the wonder and adoration Erik once basked in. Erik’s breath hitches, and his fury drains away without fanfare. “Did you honestly think no one knew?” Raven asks. Her tone is soft and lacks a mocking edge. She allows herself a little scoff, though. “That was the thing about Charles, I suppose,” she says in Charles’s voice, and it’s a sharp pain in Erik’s chest to hear Charles spoken of in the past tense. “Always thought his being a genius made everyone else a neanderthal.”

Erik moves in close to her — to Charles. He places his palms on two firm pectorals, dusted with fine brown hair. He draws in a shaky breath. “You,” is all he can say.

Raven cranes her neck up to meet him in a kiss. Before he seals his lips over Charles’s, she whispers, “I don’t mind if you pretend.”

 _Charles_ , he doesn’t say, and once upon a time, there would have been an answering laugh, a recitation of _Erik_ echoing through his mind, but now there is nothing, there is an emptiness. And though that emptiness is like a phantom limb, a presence Raven cannot recreate, no matter how marvelous her own gift, Erik nonetheless bears his lover down onto the bed and presses their bodies together in an ecstatic reunion that sets his blood ablaze.

Hands scrabble to divest Erik of his clothing. Erik gasps into that mouth. “Kiss harder,” he mutters. “Hold back nothing.” In a surge, Charles’s tongue is in Erik’s mouth and Erik has been pushed back by the force of the advance. He has a lapful of Charles Xavier and nothing separating their skin, and for the first time in months, he feels the tension that has been his life’s companion ebb away.

He pushes Charles’s back into the bedding and grinds their cocks together. A shout escapes Charles’s throat at the sensation, head thrown back, and Erik buries his face into the creamy neck, mouth and teeth ready to lay claim to the pale expanse of it. Charles’s legs wrap around his hips, force their groins closer, and Erik is lost in the smell of him, the feel of him, the sound of his voice panting around the syllables of his name. Those hands are in his hair, those arms are around his shoulders, that cock is leaking onto the muscles of his stomach, and this is what he’s needed, craved, longed for in the long, dark hours of the night, alone in this desolate bed with nothing but his own thoughts. His regrets.

“Charles,” he cannot help saying, “Charles.”

There is a grunt when Erik flips his lover over and then a cry when he pushes his face into Charles’s perineum and makes a greedy meal of the tight, quivering hole. His hands grip convulsively at the muscled cheeks and he abandons himself to the task he’s set on. Charles’s hole is hot and tight, framed by crisp brown hairs that Erik revels in disordering, and his lover is squirming, pushing back into Erik’s face, fists twisted in the sheets.

“Please,” comes his voice, “Erik, _please_ ,” and it’s exactly, exactly as Charles had once begged him so well for his hands, his tongue, his cock.

In answer Erik parts Charles’s cheeks further and drags the flat of his tongue firmly over the slackening bud. He seals his mouth over the muscle and sucks — he commits the answering bellow to memory, then traces the tip of his tongue around the rim of the hole before dipping inside for a shallow taste. Charles’s face is smothered in the pillows, back taut, and the whimpering Erik’s ministrations have wrought send sparks of arousal through Erik’s balls and up his spine.

With practiced ease he flips his lover face up and meets a flushed face, eyes half-lidded with arousal, jaw slack, dark hair plastered to the high forehead with exertion. Hazy blue eyes blink up at him, swollen lips part around his name. Erik leans in, sets a nipping kiss to the corner of Charles’s mouth. Licks at the line of stubble on his jaw, sucks a shape behind a fine ear. Charles’s legs come back up to wrap around his hips, and between them their cocks nestle together. A gasp escapes Charles’s throat and then his firm, square hand is around both of them, pumping them into the grip slicked by pre-ejaculate fluid. Erik grunts into Charles’s shoulder and thrusts forward into the contact. On his back is Charles’s other hand, rubbing the line of his shoulders just as he once had, coming up to tangle in his hair in fondness, just as he used to. Erik squeezes his eyes shut, breathes in the deep good scent of him, tells himself to remember exactly this.

He sits back on his heels and surveys his lover’s body, debauched, mottled with a blush, splayed open. His skims his hand down a lean chest, passes it over the curiously uncircumcised cock and tightly drawn testicles, then pushes up one thigh to expose further the tight aperture of Charles’s anus. He sighs, rubs his fingertips over the wrinkled hole, slick with his own saliva. He hears breath hitch in Charles’s throat.

“I’ve never—”

“Hush,” Erik says in a growl. “Let me.”

He unearths a small tub of lubricant from deep in his bedside drawer and slathers some on his fingers before spreading it onto Charles’s anus. A sigh erupts from his throat at the touch, but Erik only rubs more firmly in a circular motion to relax the muscle. Charles’s knees come up, bony feet dangling before him, and Erik pushes a thigh further back and inserts a finger into Charles’s body with careful precision. Pants and small sounds fill the space of Erik’s bedroom as he stretches and prepares his lover for his entrance, and Erik takes his time; he’s always been careful with Charles, always wanted to keep him safe, unhurt — in the bed they shared and outside of it. He does not, for now, think about how badly he’s failed at that very endeavor.

When Erik deems the passage sufficiently prepared, he settles on his side, chest to Charles’s back, arms secure around Charles’s body. He encourages a leg up to make way for him and guides his cock to the loosened hole, pushing inexorably inward into the tight sleeve of heat and friction. A moan rises from Charles’s gullet at the first slow thrust inside, and then Erik is in all the way, swallowed to the root by the hot grip of Charles’s body. Erik shudders at the sensation, so dearly missed, and pushes his face into the damp hair on the back of Charles’s neck, squeezing his lover to him tighter. He allows the groan that’s been building to leave him, and then he’s pulled Charles’s head around to meet him for a kiss that’s somehow too gentle for all that lies between them. Erik takes it anyway, savors Charles’s lips on his own, caresses the broad tongue with his own. They kiss and he absorbs the feeling of Charles’s chest with his palms, reaches down to pump at the cock that remains stiff and unflagging at the juncture of his thighs. Slowly, then with increasing purpose, Erik begins to thrust.

Being inside Charles is an exquisite pleasure unlike any Erik knew before they’d met. When they first came together, it had been a communion, a rhapsody, a meeting of minds both literally and figuratively. When he looked into Charles’s eyes, he had felt laid bare, open and free, and Charles would smile at him, tell him he loved to feel him inside, tell him how perfect it all was, and a warm awe would bloom in Erik’s ill-used heart to behold a creature so otherworldly. To have the privilege of calling him his own. Charles, in giving of himself, made Erik feel both humble and invincible, a conquerer and the conquered all at once. Charles had felt like salvation from his own doomed thoughts.

Urgency mounts and Erik shifts on top, slinging Charles’s legs up around his shoulders. He thrusts hard and fast and puts his hands around that face, sets his mouth to Charles’s, pulls up and meets dark blue eyes, smooths the hair back.

“Tell me,” he says as he snaps his hips in an unrelenting rhythm, snub head of his cock battering that place inside that makes Charles’s eyes flutter and roll. He wants to hear it in Charles’s voice, wants to hear it resounding in his brain: _Erik, it’s so good, so good inside me, love_. But Erik’s lover is beyond speech and incapable of telepathy; the hand on his cock is a blur — and its movements are inexpert.

Suddenly there is a cry, too high and keening to be Charles. He shimmers away into a wash of sinuous blue, and then Erik is fucking Raven, his cock lodged in her stretching anus as she works at herself and comes rather explosively, her hole a vice around him as she rides the throes of her orgasm. The sound Erik makes is between despair and unbearable arousal, and he jerks away from her. He is panting and disbelieving as he sits cringing on the edge of his bed, and he drags his hands through his hair, pulls hard enough to make it hurt.

“Im sorry, I’m sorry,” Raven is chanting behind him.

“Get out.”

“Erik—”

“Get the hell out of my sight, Raven.” The lamps rattle, and in the closet there’s a clattering cascade sound, and Erik knows all the wire hangers have fallen to the floor. The boxy television threatens to topple. There comes a touch on his back and he whirls, wrenching her wrist and yanking her forward. She yelps, and she’s all limbs in his lap, gleaming golden eyes bright with tears as she gapes up at him. “Never do this again, do you understand me?” She gives a single sharp nod and he pushes her away from him. The door flies open and she runs through it before Erik slams it shut again.

He squeezes his eyes shut. He looks down at where Charles — Raven occupying Charles’s body — had just lain. He slides under the sheet beside that space, which is still warm, which still smells of Charles. He lays a hand upon it. He takes a deep breath.

 _Charles_. He thinks it as loudly as he can, hoping the broadcast carries.


End file.
